Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) Streaming of media, e.g. over a content delivery network has been widely adopted for media consumption. Various protocols for such streaming have been proposed, and are often associated with various providers of hardware or software. For example, the HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol has been put forth by Apple, and is typically associated with Apple devices, such as iPhones, iPads, and so forth. Likewise, the HTTP Smooth Streaming (HSS) protocol has been proposed by Microsoft, and is accordingly often associated with Microsoft products, such as Windows Phone and Silverlight. The HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) protocol is associated with Adobe and Adobe products, such as Flash Player and Flash Media Server. MPEG DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP, ISO/IEC 23009-1:2012) was put forward by the MPEG standards body as yet another alternative standard ABR protocol.
It is appreciated that each of these protocols may be supported on hardware or by software produced by one of these bodies, even though that particular hardware or software may be produced by one particular provider, and the ABR format associated with a different provider. By way of example, a device running a Microsoft operating system may display streamed content which is streamed using the HDS protocol of Adobe.